Soren and the world's unconscious sarcasm

"To be sacrificed is...as long as the world remains the world, a far greater achievement than to conquer; for the world is not so perfect that to be victorious in the world by adaptation to the world does not involve a dubious mixture of the world's paltriness.
To be victorious in the world is like becoming something great in the world; ordinarily to become something great in the world is a dubious matter, because the world is not so excellent that its judgement of greatness unequivocally has great significance - except as unconscious sarcasm."

-Kiekegaard, quoted in Kathryn Tanner, "Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity. A Brief Systematic Theology","(free preview here) p. 124, HT: Living Wittily